Why does a child exposed to varying sentence structures within the critical period converge on a single grammatical form for expressing negation, rather than maintaining multiple forms?

💡 Explanation

Parameter setting guides language acquisition toward a single grammatical form to match the ambient language because it involves selecting specific values for universal grammar parameters. This narrows down possibilities, therefore a single, consistent form emerges, rather than maintaining multiple forms which would require multiple parameter settings and conflict with the established mechanism.

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